It’s awards season

Last week, the 2011 Man Booker Prize for fiction was announced (despite my preference for other books, Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending won). This upcoming weekend the 2011 World Fantasy Awards will be announced, and on November 16 the National Book Awards for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young people’s literature will be announced.

I have or am in the process of reading the shortlisted books for each of these awards, at least for the fiction/novel category (and several others from other categories in the case of the latter two awards). Although I have given brief thoughts on the Booker Prize nominees, I might revisit one or more of those in the coming weeks with full, formal reviews. Three of the five National Book Award finalists in fiction have already been reviewed and I might review the other two over the next few days. I have read four of the six World Fantasy Award finalists in the novel category and either reviewed or discussed in a roundup post three of the finalists; I will try to write more reviews later this week/weekend or at least a roundup post similar to the one I did for the Booker Prize shortlist.

Hopefully, this will be of interest to readers here, since I take pride in covering books that might be passed over because the books are “too literary,” “too generic,” “too obscure,” “too populist,” “too elitist” (whatever that might mean), etc. Once all of these awards are announced and I have read all 16 books between the three novel/fiction categories, I’ll do a summary post looking at the merits and deficiencies of each as a conglomerate. Somebody has to do the dirty work while others pimp the latest cover art in place of writing substantive (if occasional these days) reviews, no?